Topic: The Coingen.io scam (Read 8076 times)

Here read below it took me almost a whole minute to find this online and another 5 minutes to download a random coin from coingen and test it and it worked fine. Once again I didn't write it so I've going to post the link to the OP so he can have the credit.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/coingenio-beginners-guide-406476


If the following happened to you, this guide is for you:

1. You created a new altcoin on coingen.io, ready to change the world with your own altcoin!

2. You downloaded the zipfile and installed the xxxcoin-qt wallet to Windows. While you are reasonably knowledgeable about Windows and maybe a little about Macs, all you know about Linux is that it involves penguins in some manner and there seems to be quite a lot of typing involved.

3. You ran the wallet and waited for something to happen - but it just sat there, saying "Block Source Not Available", perhaps a number of hours (or days) behind, and a computer icon with a red X on the bottom right corner. No matter how long you waited, nothing happened.

4. Searching the web, you found some mining software and downloaded it - one called CGminer looked like Microsoft DOS circa 1989, so you went with GUIMiner (scrypt if you chose "scrypt" in your coingen.io setup screen). You installed that too, but weren't sure what should go into any of the fields. When you pressed "Start" anyway, nothing happened.

5. Confused, you googled "coingen.io" and spent several hours looking for documentation, guides, walkthroughs, friggin' ANYTHING, to help you set it up.

6. After a while, you realized all the people who know how to set up altcoins REALLY don't want any more altcoins floating around. It is not a coincidence that they are not falling all over themselves to help bring new altcoins into the mix (basically, "my altcoin #94 is going to get all messed up by your altcoin #298, you charlatan!")

7. You also read a lot of posts saying what a scam coingen.io was, and began to think you wasted some BTC. You may have cried a tear or two for all the lost beer that represented.

But all is not lost! The coingen.io software really does work - so I wrote this to summarize what I was able to find out in a couple of days from various sources, but isn't actually clearly stated anywhere for an altcoin novice (like me) to easily grasp. The following information is insultingly simple for people who know what they're doing, but is pretty damn hard to find if you don't.

MAIN POINTS:
1. For a brand-new altcoin to run, there must be at least two computers running your xxxcoin client. This is the sort of thing that's a "well, DUH" fact for experienced people and a "HTF was I supposed to know that?" for newbies. These can be on separate networks, or you can manually instruct your client to look for another computer on the same network. For now, we'll assume you have two computers on the same network or workgroup (doesn't need to be a work domain, it can just be a couple of computers in your house that use the same router).

2. So go to each computer, download your altcoin zipfile from coingen.io, and install it on each computer.

3. While your kit doesn't come with a preset configuration file, you can create one with a text editor. Assuming you created "xxxcoin", this file should be located at C:\Users\(your name)\Appdata\Roaming\Xxxcoin, and should be called "xxxcoin.conf". This configuration file needs to be created manually, and includes some vital parameters if you are starting from scratch. You will want to create this on each of the two computers.

4. Here are some basic parameters you can use to get started:

server=1 (I think you need this to solo mine)
daemon=1 (not sure what this does)
listen=1 (this makes your client listen for other clients - this may be default anyway, but I tossed it in there just in case)
rpcuser=(a username you choose)
rpcpassword=(password you choose)
rpcallowip=127.0.0.1 (this is for solo mining setup)
rpcconnect=127.0.0.1 (this is for solo mining setup)
rpcport=9527 (you can set this to any port - this does not need to be the same port as you chose in coingen.io setup, which is the TCP port for your firewall)
addnode=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (this is very important - when starting from scratch, you will have to tell one of the two clients exactly where the other one is. When there are hundreds of clients running, this probably isn't necessary anymore. If you are running two computers on your own network, you should type in the IP address of the other computer (google how to find a computer's own IP address if you don't know how in Windows - don't use www.whatismyipaddress.com, which will return your network's outside IP address - you want your computer's internal network IP address). This "internal IP" will probably start with either 10.1 or 192.168. You can also enter the addnode line on the other comp, pointing to the first one's IP.

5. Save each file in C:\Users\(your name)\Appdata\Roaming\Xxxcoin\xxxcoin.conf. Make sure it doesn't accidentally save as "xxxcoin.conf.txt".

6. Now start the xxxcoin-qt.exe client on both computers. If the IP addresses are correct, each one should now show a little green check in the lower right, with a connectivity icon next to it showing one bar. On the right, it may still say "Block Source not available" but we will take care of this shortly.

7. Another thing that isn't very clearly disseminated is that you can mine your new coin directly within your client - you don't need a separate mining client, although it's probably much faster, and definitely faster for scrypt. To mine, go to "Help", then Debug Window, then click the Console tab. This seems daunting but is actually very useful. Type "help" to see all the available commands. The one you want right now is "setgenerate", which tells your client to start mining. Type in "setgenerate true -1" and hit Enter. After a few seconds, it should start mining coins! You will see them pop up in blocks on your main wallet screen - you can click "Transactions" to get a list of mined blocks. Note that blocks are "immature" until 120 more blocks have been created, then they are added to your balance.

8. Now go to your other computer and run "setgenerate true -1" on that computer too - it should also start mining. If you are curious about how fast you're mining, go to the console and type "getmininginfo" and look for hashespersec - 1000 equals 1kH/sec.

9. You can also type other commands in the console - type "help" to see the list again. "Getpeerinfo" should show the other computer's info. You may notice the IP address ends in ":xxxxx" - this is the port number corresponding to that IP address, which is not important when on the same network and is auto-generated.

10. Once you have mined 120 blocks, try sending some coins from one to the other. On one computer, go to "Receive" and copy the address listed there - e-mail or write down that address. Then go to the other computer and click "Send", and paste/type in the address you got from the first one. When you send them, they will be transferred from one computer to the other when the next block is mined, and then fully confirmed after 6 more blocks have been processed in total. This is a very simple example of how the whole bitcoin blockchain works - I found it pretty cool because my raw newbieness rating is so high.

11. Now if you have a scrypt-based coin, you will want to download GUIMiner-scrypt, and run that miner instead of the built-in one - it will generally be 50-100x faster. Once you have downloaded and installed it, make sure your xxxcoin-qt client/wallet is already running - then start the miner. I was not able to get the default miner scenario working, so had to go to File-New, and created a reaper miner. In host, enter 127.0.0.1. In Port, enter 9527, or whatever you chose to use in your "rpcport=" in your xxxcoin.conf file above. The username and password should also match what you put in your .conf file.

12. Next, go to "Solo Utilities" in the miner and choose "Set Bitcoin Client Path" - this should be C:\Program Files (x86)\Xxxcoin\xxxcoin-qt.exe. Make sure to click on the filename to replace the "bitcoin-qt" default, then click "Open". Next, go to Solo Utilities - Set Bitcoin Data Directory, and set to C:\Users\(your name)\Appdata\Roaming\Xxxcoin instead of Bitcoin. You don't need to start the client as a server since you already included the "Server=1" parameter in your .conf file.

13. Now choose a "GPU default" most closely matching your own GPU, and click Start. After a few seconds, it should start creating blocks, and a "xx khash/s" number should show up in the lower right. In some cases, the block problem is so easy that your GPU will just kick out stale/invalid blocks (basically tripping all over itself) and not create actual blocks. In this case, click File-Quit in GUIMiner, and create a desktop icon for guiminer.exe on your desktop. Right-click on the icon for guiminer.exe , and add " -s1.5" right after guiminer.exe in the "Target" box, so it shows the path, then "guiminer.exe -s1.5" at the end. This introduces a little pause between solving, and provides a better balance of accepted/stale (or did for me anyway).

14. Now start the miner again, and start the particular mining scenario you created - if it's correctly solving, you should see little pop-ups of new blocks created, just like when you were mining through the qt client, but hopefully a lot faster.

15. Fool around with different combinations and settings in the miner to get the best performance.

16. (Different Networks) If you don't have two computers on your network, or want to try this with a friend when they are on a different network, you will need to do a couple additional steps. I only tried this with static IPs, and I'm not sure how to set it up if all you have are dynamic IPs. You could probably make it work by going to www.whatismyipaddress.com from each computer, then entering that address into the "addnode=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" on the other computer's xxxcoin.conf screen. But for at least one static IP:

a. First, on at least one router's firewall settings screen, create a new port forwarding rule that forwards incoming traffic on the port you chose during your coingen.io creation to the internal IP address of the computer on that network that's running the coin client. You can find this port number again by going to "
Help-Debug Window-Command-Line Options - Show Details" then scroll down to "-port" and it will list that port number. This is the TCP port number you want to forward in your firewall. (If someone more knowledgeable than I thinks this is an extraordinarily bad idea, please speak up).

b. Next, modify the xxxcoin.conf file on the OTHER computer (not the one behind the firewall you just set) so that the "addnode=" includes both the IP address and port number for the first computer behind the firewall. So for example, if the computer behind the firewall has a router with the external static IP address of 222.222.222.222, and you just opened TCP port 9555, then the .conf file on the OTHER computer should say "addnode=222.222.222.222:9555".

c. If you configured the firewall port forwarding correctly, you should be able to start both clients and both will see each other. You don't need to modify both firewalls, and if one computer isn't behind a firewall at all, you might be able to connect without the port forwarding or adding the ":9555" port number. Try it and see, and only do the firewall stuff if you cannot connect otherwise.

I hope this guide comes in handy and assists some people in getting their coingen.io projects up and running!

CAVEATS & DISCLAIMERS:

1. I realize I'm a frigging idiot and total newbie, and that this is full of errors I'm not aware of, some of which could make your computer explode, and potentially break the Internet forever. I know just enough to be dangerous, and only wrote this guide because I couldn't find one that anyone else had written, and wanted to save others some time.

2. I would love it if someone more knowledgeable made corrections, comments, and/or criticisms. However, please use your "verbose" setting - very smart IT people tend to say things like "oh, just do the addnode and forward the port - easy/peasy" - which makes it frustrating for people like me who don't know WTF an addnode is, whether the port means the rpcport, or the port you gave in coingen.io, and is that a TCP or UDP port, and where do you forward it to, and why the %)*# they use "port" to describe everything assuming you know all the various ways ports can be used, etc.

coingen.io is not a scam!!!

i have sucessfully launched my coin Sebuhcoin last night and formed the genesis block with my laptop and desktop. i started mining right away and then found a peer over the internets and made some more nodes with friends we have about 50million coins mined so far with blocks of 9000. i have no idea what the other parameters were when i set up the coin so its baiscally a blind coin, kind of like me, since i wear glasses.

things seem bigger the closer you get.

i am currently trying to get my sebuhcoin on a cloud proxy and cdn and finding an ip lawyer and making an llc. then im going to foudnate it like bitcoin and the rest.

taking it one step at a time if you want to start mining and trying to fork my coin your welcome to unleash some GHS.



http://coingen.bluematt.me/build/7faad07f.zip

You fucking leeches make me sick.
You are not helping the industry with your copycat coins.
It is only cluttering up the place for those coins that are actually unique or offer something new to the community.

got the coingen coin after 7 days,
With little aditional work it is functional

Oh, the irony! 

Dear all,
I think it is a scam afterall. Paid 0,2 BTC 6 days ago, and still nothing is delivered. Anyone who wants to go to coingen, please check this post. I will also put update if I get my coin. Until then, it's really anoying to watch messsage:


Coingen

We received your request to create xxxxxxxxxxx.

The monkeys, however, are waiting for 0.16 BTC to be sent to  before they start building....
There were more than 25 confirmations in less than an hour, so I believe it's pretty much a ripoff

It absolutely does work. What I've run into is most people who buy the coingen service don't know there's a lot more to starting a coin besides getting some code compiled.

wow didn't know galtcoin was a coingen.  coingen does work!

You can indeed mine the coingen coins, I did.  But you do have to do some setting up yourself.  You do know that your coin needs to be running on more than 1 computer and that you will need an 'addnode' line in there as well??

We're extremely happy with our coingen experience. After reading a lot of documentation I've been more than happy to have a large chunk of the leg work done.

If you're waiting for Matt to respond "or something" you're barking up the wrong tree. He sold the thing a couple of days after releasing it. You'll probably get more luck from asking the new owner.

yes, but in the us, a product must work as intended. this even goes past all sales are final signs. if you buy a knife that docent cut at an all sales are final shop. you have a legal right to a refund. if they refuse you can sue them for lawyer fees. Why lawyer fees? they are "stubbornly litigious"

if 'silence' is 'the biggest part of the scam', there's nothing to see here.

above all other products, 'software' comes with no expressed or implied warranty.  ever try to get money from microsoft to compensate you when windows crashes?

And do you have any other evidence, or is lack of 'respect' enough to be considered a scammer?

A scam is something that people think are buying and not receiving. Sure it was naive from all of us, but I think we all searched on coingen and Matt before buying ... being confident enough to send some BTC his way, hoping for a minimal instruction. The biggest part of the scam is his silence towards all his clients. Depending on wich part of the world you live, everything comes with a warranty of somekind.

How long would it have taken him to write a short post or tutorial on how to use this product ? He own everybody a minimal respect. We trusted him enough to buy his product, he should show a little be a respect towards us.

Their code is broken, quite simply.

Some of us have actually tried to fix the code and get this crappy thing to work. No go.

And if you were able to, bravo! That don't make it sensible to ship a piece of crap most people can't use.

Why is this a scam? Because they aren't holding your hand through the whole process? They aren't advertising to be your "development team". If you can't start the genesis block of your own coin should you even deserve to create it?

They deliver their advertised product, albeit it's hastily done in 30 min or so. That gives you a copied Bitcoin 0.8.6 client (which you can download for free from GitHub). A new logo pasted on the GUI (which you could swap out in less than 1 min in your directory). And they change a handful of key parameters in a couple source files that you could also change in 5-10 minutes if you know how to type in a search bar.

All that is clearly visible on their site. Your laziness combined with their simple copy-paste products doesn't = scam. It equates to you being lazy and paying someone else to copy and paste files for you at a rate of $400/hr. Great business sense on their end if you ask me.

Get over it and learn something about your new coin "you created". Hint: start with a search on "generating the genesis block"

So it is just the Bitcoin source with a new magic number, new port and new genesis block?

Definitely a scam. I sent .20 BTC for a custom coin and source. Coingen did not include any of the parameters I input on the site in the source code, it simply copied the Bitcoin source without making any changes and slapped my logo on the wallet. After a number of emails to Matt Corallo requesting a fix or refund, I received neither. Not even a response. Way to pay back the bitcoin community Matt. Thanks a lot.

anti-scam BUMP!

yea it a scam i try making a coin too and the block database wont load but i only got scamed .02 so i am a little mad